


Never Simple

by InnerCinema, Kuailong, letthesongtakeflight, SatinSatire



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Past Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerCinema/pseuds/InnerCinema, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuailong/pseuds/Kuailong, https://archiveofourown.org/users/letthesongtakeflight/pseuds/letthesongtakeflight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SatinSatire/pseuds/SatinSatire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony goes digging in the SHIELD information dump, he finds something that is most definitely not okay. His revealing of the information to Natasha yields the opposite results that he wanted, and they're left picking up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Simple

  
_“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” **Oscar Wilde - The Importance of being Earnest**_

 

Tony really had to wonder if Natasha knew what she was doing when she dumped terrabytes' worth of encrypted information on the internet. Not that any but the best could decrypt the files, and well, Tony was the best. But he strongly suspected that perhaps Natasha had lost way too much blood to be making executive decisions pertaining to SHIELD. He tried not to dwell too long on the fact that his girlfriend had taken down HYDRA with a goddamn hole in her shoulder. It was unsettling.

He stared at his screen as he watched the decryption program do its work. He wondered what he would find; he was just itching to open the files. He was glad he had snagged them first and then wiped their electronic paper trail from the internet. These were his piles of candy, and no one else’s. He leaned back in his chair and hummed along to the beat of the seemingly random Bon Jovi song blasting in the background. It didn’t matter that it was five A.M. And it definitely didn’t matter that Natasha was in New Jersey for the next day, so that she had no idea he was even digging around in Candyland. He still had a good half hour before the first batch of files were decrypted, but, well, he had time. And pizza. He was good.

Said pizza was soon on the verge of coming back up when he stared at the file in front of him. Since he was a genius after all, digging through the anticipated superficial mess of SHIELD history had been done in the blink of an eye. It was the truly dirty little secrets Tony liked to savor like a good drink before anyone could stop him – but now, every pleasure was replaced by utter consternation and horror:

**Name: Natalia Alianovna Romanova**

**Date of birth: November 22nd 1928**

“Well fuck.” His hands tousled and tucked on his unruly hair further when he scanned the rest of her file. The official data on her was a mere flyspeck in comparison: Enhancements similar to the super-soldier-serum, wiping of memories and their replacement with artificial ones… and this was just the beginning of a more detailed list. Those assholes surely had not been idle.

How much did Natasha know? He was pretty sure the memory replacements would be new even to her. It was too big a thing to not have it mentioned at some point. Fucking SHIELD!

The engineer slumped back on his chair and ran one hand over his face while the other tapped on the Arc Reactor in a worried staccato.

If Natasha didn’t know – and he was pretty sure that she didn’t – all that remained to be done was to tell her. But was that really the best thing to do? If he was flipping out over this, and it wasn’t even his memories that were messed with, Natasha was bound to flip out even more. With most of her early life (or what she believed was her early life, a voice piped up at the back of Tony’s mind) taken from her and depersonalised, she was fiercely protective of the parts of her life that she could claim as her own. If Tony told her the truth, in effect taking those memories and shattering her world before her, would that be even worse that keeping her in the dark?

No, it wouldn't, Tony realised. He had always propagated the right to knowledge; information shouldn't be kept from people (unless, of course, it was his information, in that case he was the only one who could touch it, but that was another matter entirely). No matter how screwed up her history was, he couldn't deny Natasha the right to know her own past. He couldn't allow her to keep on believing in a lie. Not when it would matter so much to her.

 

_"Everybody's got a secret, can you tell me what is mine? Can you tell me what you'd find, I'll tell you if you keep it. I promise not to lie" **Sum-41 - Reason to Believe**_

 

Natasha looked at Tony, noticing he was unusually quiet. “Well?” she prompted. “What was it that you had to tell me?” She had received his text messages urging her to go see him as soon as she returned from New Jersey. He had refused to give her any other details until they met in person.

Tony sat across from her, the exhaustion showing on his face. He felt uneasy, but knew this was the right thing to do. “Tasha, remember those files you dumped on the internet?”

She looked at him curiously. “Of course. What about them?”

“I couldn’t help myself… you know how I am. I downloaded the data and well, it didn’t take me long to decrypt it. SHIELD should be embarrassed.” He was aware he was rambling but he couldn’t stop himself. “I found your files.”

Natasha remained perfectly still, her expression calm. Her heart began to race as she realized he now knew the dirty details of all of her evaluations and assignments. However, she knew what she had been doing when she put the information on the internet, so she could not say she was surprised. “I see.”

“No, you don’t understand.” He clenched his teeth and decided to barrel on ahead. “I found what was hidden from you. You weren’t brought on as child spy in the early 1990s. You were brought on in the 1930s.”

“The 1930s? That’s not possible," she said, her voice heavy with disbelief. She hesitated when Tony waved her over to his screen. Did she even want to see that? Something was itching in the back of her mind, a familiar feeling she had not had since she was under the influence of the Red Room. That familiar itch meant that something buried deep in the back of her mind was fracturing, or rising to the surface. That a modicum of programming was breaking down, and she was afraid. But, still, she had to know. So she walked closer to Tony, leaning over his shoulder to read the file he had brought up.

“You have some sort of super soldier serum, according to this. I guess that explains a lot, genetic experimentation,” Tony said, glancing up at her as she read. He didn’t like the look on her face, as it hardened the further she read. As her eyes grew distant. He had no more words to offer her, comfort wasn’t his thing. Even when it came to Natasha.

“This can’t be possible. There’s no …” She trailed off as that itching grew and something in her mind fractured. It was possible, SHIELD had implanted their own memories into her. For what reason, she didn’t know. A slur of Russian slipped past her lips as she steadied herself against Tony’s chair with one hand and clutched her head with the other. She groaned, trying to keep herself upright through the pain. It was far too reminiscent of her time under the Red Room and she didn’t like it.

“Nat. ‘Tasha, you okay?” Tony asked, though, clearly he could tell she wasn’t. Something was going very wrong, and he was beginning to doubt himself. Her face was scrunched up in pain, something he rarely, if ever, saw, and he could barely understand her when she spoke. He stood quickly, placing hands on her shoulders to steady her. He didn’t expect her to cry out, and he certainly didn’t expect her to lash out and shove him away.

“No!” she cried out as she shoved Tony away, losing the one hand steadying her. She crumpled to the ground, using both hands to clutch her head. The pain was phenomenal, and she was losing herself in it. Losing herself in the memories that were being dragged up, and pushed to the forefront of her mind. A choked sob left her throat, even as she felt arms being wrapped around her. All she could tell was that the arms belonged to an ally. That was all that mattered.

“JARVIS, get Bruce down here. Now,” Tony called out to his A.I. as he bent down and wrapped his arms around Natasha in an attempt to comfort her. He was lost and confused, and frankly, he was terrified.

Minutes seemed like hours while he was pressing her against his chest, his own heart pounding hard against the arc reactor as the adrenaline pumped through his veins. It was all his fault she was like this. Had he just kept silent, they… no. Not silent. She would have known something was up but… Tony restrained himself from fidgeting. He was utterly at loss but at least he knew what would be the wrong thing to do now. But JARVIS, the angelic intelligence, had obviously gotten the severity of the situation because it only took two or three minutes in real time for Bruce to show up. The scientist was out of breath and had obviously taken the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.

Without having to ask, Bruce assessed the situation with nothing more than a glance and strode towards the pair to crouch down in front of Natasha, his hands just hovering over her shoulders. “Hey, Natasha, come on. Look at me.” When he did not get any reaction he touched her shoulders to get her attention. “Come on, Natasha. Breathe. In… and out… in… and out…” His voice was warm and low and soothing apparently effective.

Only when her ragged breathing became normal, the scientist shot his friend an inquiring look but instead of a verbal answer, Tony just nodded towards the displays which still showed the results of his fateful research. Letting go of Natasha, Bruce rose and scanned the information with a face that at first conveyed clinical neutrality but as he read on, the scientist grew pale and furrowed his brow.

He turned to look at Tony, his ashen face wearing an expression of horror and anger. "They did this to her?" It came out as a snarl and he fought to keep his alter-ego under control.

Tony nodded, more serious than Bruce had ever seen him before, and he knew that Tony wanted nothing more than to hurt those responsible. But for now, the engineer's main concern was Natasha; she was still on the floor, eyes squeezed shut, her breathing deliberately slow and steady, like it was the only way she could hold the pain – and the memories – at bay. He cradled her in his arms, wanting her to be more comfortable. "Baby," he said, cupping her chin. "Tasha, look at me."

She opened her eyes slowly, as though her eyelids were weighed down and it took all her strength to lift them. "You're okay, you're safe, I got you," Tony said, though he knew that this was the one thing he couldn't fix. He couldn't tinker with what was inside her, and he wouldn't play with her mind like Red Room did, like goddamn SHIELD did.

"Why?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Why hide it from me – my own life, my past –" She groaned and clutched her head. "It hurts," she mumbled, so softly that Tony was sure she didn't mean for him to hear it.

She was no stranger to this; she'd broken through the brainwashing the Red Room had done to her and the trauma of it was not something she ever wanted to experience again. The disjointedness, the second-guessing, the doubting of everything she thought she knew. The memories pushed their way into consciousness, like water crashing through a dam and she was drowning in them.

She remembered the lessons on the impending threat of the war, and the German invasion. She remembered sneaking into the German troops as a child spy, begging soldiers for food while listening to their plans of attack. She remembered the feel of Lena's nose cracking under her fist, her trainer's praise ringing out like a gunshot.  She remembered the lonely decades of wandering around Europe, doing job after job, for far longer than she knew. She remembered Mila, the little girl's sweaty palm against her own as she smuggled her across the continent. She remembered the child shot in front of her, her hands on the girl's chest as she bled out.

Natasha cried out. The images in her mind knocked against each other, jumbling with her pre-existing memories, trying to all fit into a timeline that wasn't long enough. That was half a century too short. They crammed together, overlapping and covering each other, all their sights and sounds and scents crashing together in a mix that just didn't make sense.

 

_“Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces.” **Richard Kadrey - Kill the Dead**_

 

Natasha had declined the sedative Bruce offered to administer to her. The last thing she needed was to feel even more out of control than she already did. She still felt shaky, disoriented, and her head pounded but she had silenced her cries.

Tony had carried her to their bed and he thought she had fallen asleep, but when he bent closer to look at her he saw that her eyes were wide open, staring blankly ahead. Guilt burned through him. He was furious with himself for having contributed to this. He was aware enough to know he hadn’t caused it, but maybe if he had been born with tact he would not have delivered the blow so brutally.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her. “I’m not good at this, but I wish I was, for you.” She didn’t respond and he fell silent, running his hand gently through her hair.

Natasha was silent for a while longer, and when she finally spoke her voice was hoarse with pain. “Why… why would do they do that to me?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s only dates and summaries of what was implanted… charts with your reactions, how you handled the process.” He felt slightly ill just recounting it to her.

She turned her head to look at him, her eyes dark with pain. “I tried so hard to make up for what I did for Red Room.” Her lip curled. “Or maybe I didn’t, and that was made up, too. Is anything real? Are you?” She turned away from him again, burying her face against the silky pillowcase. Her breathing was tight, but she refused to lose control again.

Don’t fuck this up, he told himself sternly as he tried to figure out how to answer her. “I’m real. I’m here for you. What we have is real,” he assured her softly. “If you have any doubt about our relationship, I can play you the videos—“ He stopped when she cut a glare at him, and to her surprise and his relief; a brief laugh escaped her lips.

“No… It’s all right. I believe you about that.” Some of the strain left her face and she rubbed at her temples. “I just… I trusted Fury,” she said in a small voice. And if she was being honest with herself, that betrayal hurt most of all. “He gave me a chance to redeem myself and prove I was… actually worth something.” Her eyes stung; she didn’t bother to hold back her tears. They scalded her cheeks as they slipped out, one by one. “My whole head is a mess, Tony.”

Tony decided he was going to have a conversation with One Eye very soon. If Fury thought Tony was a pain in the ass before, he hadn’t seen anything yet. “I don’t know why he did it. Maybe in some twisted way, he thought he was helping you.”

“Maybe.” Her gaze went distant again. “What am I going to do?”

For once Tony, who had an answer for everything, was at a loss for words.

They sat in silence for a bit longer, Tony still at a complete loss as to what to say or do. Natasha was in pain and he couldn’t stop it. She was refusing help, and that frightened him. Could she be permanently harming herself by ignoring help? And he wished there was something he could do. He glanced down at her, finding her asleep. He carefully extracted himself from her, doing his best not to wake her. That was another sign something was wrong, she didn’t wake when he moved. In fact, she didn’t even react. That was more troubling than anything. Still, he made an effort to be as quiet as possible as he stepped out of their bedroom.

He wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. He had no idea how to make it better. He moved to the living room and laid his head in his hands. And how did he even begin to deal with the fact that Natasha was eighty-six. He had always assumed it was her training that made her good, but obviously there had been more. Genetic experimentation, it seemed, was the answer. He heard soft footsteps behind him and he lifted his head to face Natasha. She moved around the couch and sat next to him, curling up against his side. She was silent, and it worried him.

“Talk to me, ‘Tasha,” he pleaded softly, maybe they could talk this out.

Despite his words, the silence stretched further but it felt different this time, more contemplative instead of tense and strained though it did not make him worry less.

“I…” she started with an unfamiliar hesitance, vulnerability. “Whenever I close my eyes I remember something new.” She paused. “And every time I open them I feel like something of me has been replaced… altered.” Every word sounded forced but he was grateful she was talking to him, trusting him still. Quietly, he reached for her hand and gratefully squeezed it in a gentle attempt for comfort. She still did not look at him when she continued, but that was okay. “I always had to know myself perfectly to fool everyone else around me, to show them someone else. And now… now everything I knew has been a lie as well.” Her voice broke audibly at the end of the last sentence.

It terrified Tony to see her like this but it seemed like terror only made his brain work faster, even in such a situation. “But you were pretty much alone up until the Battle of New York. Sure, you had Barton but… SHIELD isn’t really inspiring confidence… Okay, I guess this needs to be said out loud and don’t tell Steve I ever said it but: You’ve got a team now. People you can trust, who will always have your back and we’re a … family. In a way. Even though most of them are idiots. And by most of them I mean Barton. So anyway, what I really want to say is: you’ve got time, apparently, you’ve got a neutral environment, you’ve got people who will kick ass for you and… and you’ve got me whenever you need me so… take your time to figure this out. You can do it and you are not alone.”

However, the words did not have the effect he hoped for. Instead of relaxing, Natasha's brow furrowed further, and she said, "And can you promise me that's real? That there isn't going to be another file, telling me that all this – the team, Clint, you – never existed?"

 

"I promise," Tony said. "We'll always be here." He couldn't imagine how she felt, what it was like to have your entire world taken and messed with. That had to be difficult for anyone to deal with, and even more so for Natasha, who needed control and certainty in order to function.

 

He shifted slightly so that Natasha could rest her head on his chest. She could hear the light hum of the arc reactor beneath her ear, feel it vibrate against her cheek, a comforting, familiar whir. Through all her discordant memories in her head, the steady hum of the arc reactor broke through, grounding her to what she knew was real and had always been real. Tony, here, on their couch, with his arms around her. And she could almost sense the auras of the other Avengers, lingering around the tower in Bruce's tidy lab, Steve's books, Clint's stained coffee mugs. They were like pinpricks of clarity in her shaken world.  Although her head was still pounding from the discordant memories, they made the pain manageable.

 

_“It is quite a thing. There are so many men, all endlessly trying to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me lest I fall.” **Patrick Rothfuss - The wise man's fear**_

 

The next few days passed slowly. Tony tried not to hover around Natasha, but it was difficult when most of the time she slept. Or looked into space, frowning slightly. He could tell she was trying to sort through her memories, and as much as he ached for her he knew this was something she had to do on her own. His insomnia reared up and when he finally slept it was deeply and dreamlessly.

He awoke to a fresh cup of coffee on the bedside table and Natasha curled up against him.

“For me?” he asked, and she nodded.

“It’s… I’m sorry for being so mopey and self-absorbed lately,” she said.

Tony sat up to reach for the coffee cup. “Are you kidding me? There’s nothing for you to apologize for. If it had been me in your place, I’d be crawling the walls or blowing shit up. Or both.”

Her lips twitched; she searched her fragile memories and her smile became genuine. “Your bluntness is ever a source of amusement for me.”

He took a sip of coffee. “I aim to please.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “And if you don’t remember that, I’d be happy to do repeat performances. As many times as needed.”

“Very noble of you.” She nodded, and laughed. It felt good to laugh. She settled down in his arms and closed her eyes, exhaling slowly.

“What if this happens again and I don’t remember you?” she asked quietly. “Or I think I hate you or want to kill you or –”

He kissed her temple, holding her closer. “Shh. It’s okay. I’ll remember for both of us. I’ll help you to remember. I have you, Tasha. Have faith in me – in us.” He paused. “Besides, you did hate me at first. I won you over with my good looks and charm.”

She smirked  “And your modesty.”

He snorted. “Modesty is for the dull, which I am not.”

Natasha shook her head at him and smiled. There was still a faint ache in her head, but things had settled. She still had unanswered questions, but she would take it one day at a time. For now she knew she had Tony, knew he loved her, and it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> More group effort!


End file.
